VVD on VxRail – VMware vCSA 6.5->6.7 Upgrade

For each VVD Region there exists 4x vCSA appliances, this includes a load balanced pair of PSC’s and 2x vCenter’s per Region. The two vCenters are deployed to the first availability zone in each region. One vCenter Server supporting the SDDC management components and one vCenter Server supporting the edge components and tenant workloads. All PSC appliances are joined to a single SSO domain in a ring topology and an NSX ESG (Per Region) is used as a LB for these PSC’s. More VVD vCenter Architectural Design details here:

The upgrade begins in Region A by upgrading the PSC appliances which are configured in a highly available pair, in order to keep the PSC appliances alive you direct all network traffic to one PSC instance while the other PSC is being upgraded. Please refer to the VMware VVD Upgrade Guide for the detailed steps:

You will have to repeat the following steps as per VVD guidance as VVD architectures use an external PSC and have a multi-vCenter solution with Enhanced Linked Mode as detailed above. In this example upgrade (stress example, always refer to VMware official guidance for such procedures) I show how to upgrade a single vCSA PSC appliance, you simply repeat the process for any additional vCSA appliances in your SSO domain (as per VVD upgrade sequence). PSC appliances need to be upgraded first and it is a migration of the old PSC to the new PSC. The 6.5->6.7 upgrade deploys a new appliance running version 6.7 and migrates the database, a temporary IP is need for this process, once the migration complete the original IP is transferred and the old vCSA gets powered down.

Before proceeding with upgrade:

Check release notes.

Check the interop matrix for support.

Stage 1

Run the installer.exe from the vcsa-ui-installer/win32 directory.

Click on the Upgrade option

Click Next – Stage 1 Deploy New Appliance

Accept terms

Enter IP address of the source vCSA

Enter the Source vCSA SSO creds and the vCenter that manages this vCSA

Click YES to Cert warning

Enter target vCenter IP and login details

Click YES to Cert warning

Select Datacenter vCSA will get deployed in

Select an ESXi host in the cluster to deploy the vCSA to

Enter a display name for the new vCSA vm and a root password

Specify the target datastore (in this case it is a VxRail vSAN datatsore as this is a VVD on VxRail solution).

Select the VM network used for the vCSA and enter a temp IP address details in that subnet

Verify inputs and click on FINISH to kick off Stage 1 of the upgrade

You can track progress from the vSphere Client

On successful completion of Stage 1 click CONTINUE to proceed to Stage 2

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Stage 2

Once Stage 1 completes continue the upgrade wizard by clicking on the Stage 2 option (if the installer window closes you can kick off Stage 2 via the VAMI console: temp_IP:5480)

As this example is vCSA PSC upgrade enter the Source PSC credentials

Chose whether or not to Join VMware CEIP

Confirm the source PSC has been backed up and click FINISH

Click OK to the shutdown warning

Once the upgrade completes check the new vCSA health status using VAMI

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Repeat the process for the associated vCenter and any other vCSA appliances in the SSO domain as outlined by the VVD upgrade guide.